Point Solutions Just Don't Cut It

Woe be to the process owner who might boast about how their process works. If that process works in isolation, it is neither effective nor efficient and one may suggest that process does not work at all. It is the job of the IT Service Manager to make certain the inputs of one process yields outputs that support those dependent processes. And thus the dilemma of organizational process improvement. If you do not deal with all the processes, can you effectively deal with one at a time?

Before we propose an answer, consider the individual process owner who is both responsible for and proud of his or her process. The level at which their process can mature (i.e. increase in capability) is restricted by constraints that lie either in their own process or within related, interdependent processes. The astute process owner recognizes these limitations yet has no means to drive improvement in the other process. How does one deal with this in an organization?

The first step is to identify the individual process limitations within the context of the overall service management organization. No one process is held exclusively accountable yet it is within the process evaluation itself that the limitations may be identified. It is not that the process is exclusively responsible for a missing element, but that it is during the process evaluation that the deficiency is often detected - that is, during evaluation, gap sensitivity is greater and more enhanced.

Quite frankly, it is nearly impossible for a process owner to recognize the deficiency; they are just too close to the process elements. Further, it is even more difficult for a process owner to exact corrective action on the gaps if there is no authority that recognizes process deficiency is an organizational liability. Thus the second step is to identify an authority that has overall responsibility for organizational effectiveness as realized in the service management framework.

Finally, it is a management responsibility to ensure the dependencies across all processes are identified and follow-up action taken to "raise all boats."

So, where does one start? Must we work on ALL processes at once? Yes and no:
1. Identify what is required to meet your customer needs
2. Determine what you want to accomplish with your service management initiative
3. Define the requirements

Now you may begin descending from the higher-level objectives to the individual processes:
4. Decompose the requirements into the individual process interdependent components
5. Map how each requirement is fulfilled by each component
6. Use that information along with budgetary and customer inputs to scope and time-line the effort
7. Charter the initiative including authority under a Program Manager who will take responsibility for seeing individual process projects through to completion.

The reality is you are building a system. You will work on a number of different processes but the efforts will no longer be point solutions. They will be:
a. Focused on meeting an overall objective
b. Tied to individual requirements
c. Coordinated around the interdependencies of each process (inputs/outputs)
d. Prioritized, budgeted
e. Authorized